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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27497236">20 Questions</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/tatooedlaura/pseuds/tatooedlaura'>tatooedlaura</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The X-Files</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-08 02:24:34</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,846</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27497236</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/tatooedlaura/pseuds/tatooedlaura</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>what else can you play when you can't sleep? ...</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Fox Mulder/Dana Scully</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>72</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>20 Questions</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Six beers apiece, three frozen pizzas, a gallon of ice tea, a knockdown, drag-out argument complete with yelling, swearing, file throwing and roughly 12 hours later …</p><p>Snow.</p><p>Piled up to the top of the parking meter; deep, heavy, wet, sloppy, icing over snow.</p><p>All viewed by a sleepy, blinking Scully who had the minor deluded idea of getting home that night but then a draft wafted over her stocking feet and any idea of leaving evaporated in a heartbeat. Turning around, she debated going in to tell him she was staying but clock glowing 1:43am made her stay quiet and think about going back to sleep.</p><p>Problem was, she had been off the buttery, broken in couch just a hair too long and now the leather was frigidly cold, seeping immediately into her soul and making her stand before she fully understood she’d been sitting. Muttering a ‘damn it’, she grabbed an afghan, wrapped it tight and wondered where the thermostat was.</p><p>Oddly, it wasn’t in the living room, kitchen or hall, so she headed, sock-shuffle-slide, into the bedroom. It was dark in there, warmer than the living room and without the drafts. She debated whether to wake him up to kick him out of the large bed but given she was a semi-decent person, regardless of freezing status, she finally found the thermostat on the wall beside the door. Touching a button lit the panel up and the voice from the dark made her jump, “you cold?”</p><p>Keeping the whisper status of the two-word conversation, “I won’t be once I crank this bad boy up to 80.”</p><p>“Won’t help. It never gets above 70 with that thing, regardless of what I set it at.”</p><p>Turning towards the voice, her face still bathed in electric blue, profile perfection, mouth half-twisted in shivering debate, “then you either need to move over so I can share or help me dig out my car from the snowpocalypse that occurred after we fell asleep.”</p><p>With a ‘pshhht, no way in Hell’ noise, “I am not moving from under these covers so go grab the rest of the blankets off the couch and get in here but so help me God, those feet touch me and I’ll shove you right back out.”</p><p>“I love you, too, Mulder.” She went and gathered her armful then crawling under upheld covers, complained in a hissing breath, “it’s just as fucking cold here as the couch was.”</p><p>“Jack Frost has made you mouthy.”</p><p>Quaking as she spread the blankets over the pair of them, mostly her, well, all over her really because he was already warm and whatever, she couldn’t feel anything below elbows and knees, “two feet of snow, Mulder, while we slept. While you let me sleep. While you went to bed and left me to ice over out there in the living room.”</p><p>“In all seriousness, If I had woken you up, you’d have bitten me.”</p><p>Her embarrassment nearly warmed her cheeks but not quite, “that’s a very good point, although it would have been very nice to be wearing my pajamas instead of jeans.”</p><p>Searching the dark, he poked her cheek, “cranky pants, go to sleep.”</p><p>Not warming yet but decidedly on the better side of frozen solid, she moved her foot until it found his leg, “I’m not cranky.”</p><p>“Remember I said I’d kick you out of bed if you touched me.”</p><p>Turning on her side, facing away, she grinned into the pillow as her muscles unclenched, “like you’d ever kick me out of anything.”</p><p>“Very true.” Debating for a moment, “do you want some pajamas?”</p><p>“I’ll get them if I need them.”</p><p>&amp;&amp;&amp;&amp;&amp;&amp;&amp;&amp;&amp;</p><p>“Mulder?”</p><p>“Go to sleep.”</p><p>“I can’t.”</p><p>“Yeah, you can. Shut your eyes and stop thinking.”</p><p>To relieve her aching shoulder, she rolled to her back, keeping everything from the bottom of her nose down well under the covers, “we should play ’20 questions’.”</p><p>“I’m sleeping, Scully.”</p><p>“Your voice tells me otherwise. I can also deduce that you are very nearly as wide awake as I am.”</p><p>Mulder, awake mostly because she was within two feet of him, dipping his mattress and driving him mad with that warm Scully smell that wouldn’t stop invading his nose, his brain, his entire God-damned existence, gave in because … well … Scully …, “animal, vegetable or mineral?”</p><p>Next she traveled to her other side, facing him, for the sole purpose of being able to pull the covers over her head as well, warming ears and crown without suffocating in the luxury, “mineral.”</p><p>“Of course science-girl picks mineral.”</p><p>Wiggling one last time to get properly settled in her concave cocoon, “I’ll give you a hint. It’s clear.”</p><p>“Water.”</p><p>Hand across sheets for a brief moment, she tweaked his nose, “you’re cold. Get further under and no, it’s not water.”</p><p>He buried his head to mirror her, flipping to look at her, “tell me if I reek of beer and garlic, please.”</p><p>Because she was his friend and had been for the better part of 200 years, she sniffed and approved, “you’re good.”</p><p>“Go me. Anyways, is it shiny?”</p><p>“After it’s polished.”</p><p>“Is it colored?”</p><p>“I just said it was clear.”</p><p>“Hey, detail-oriented individuals such as myself know that something can be colored and clear at the same time. See through anyways. I can see the world through a pair of rose-colored glasses or some shit like that.”</p><p>This time, she waited until he’d tucked the fringe from one of the wayward afghans away from her forehead, “touche, Mr. Mulder. It is both clear and uncolored.”</p><p>He could get to like this nonsense at 3am, “is it rare or common?”</p><p>“Common for certain occasions but rare in relation to grains of sand on Earth or stars in the heavens.” He stared at her for so long after this, she began to wonder if he’d frozen solid or died on the spot, eyes still open and studying, “what? Already run out of questions?”</p><p>Game forgotten and unmissed, “I love when that poet trapped inside you gets to come out and see the world, even if just for a few moments at a time.”</p><p>“It’s not poetry, Mulder, it’s just a description to the question you asked.”</p><p>Darkness softened the walls between them faster than any alcohol could, “don’t be flippant about it. Poetry is beautiful and so are you and when you say things like that, I’m surprised I can still remember that we probably shouldn’t be sharing a bed.”</p><p>Her previous blush had nothing on this one, toes suddenly on fire, but she held his gaze, “I don’t want to go back to the couch though.”</p><p>“Then I should tell you your mineral is diamond and that we should try to go back to sleep.”</p><p>“But then you’ll win the game.”</p><p>The things he shouldn’t say this late at night were alphabetized, categorized and easily accessible to his lightning fast mind but who really gave a shit when they were snowed in bed with no hope of anyone but Scully’s God and possibly three or four dust bunnies hearing him, “I won it a long time ago, Scully, you ought to know that by now.”</p><p>One foot drifted absently over to him, finding a flannel covered kneecap, “we were having a nice, innocent game of ’20 questions’, Mulder, remember that?”</p><p>“Not really and you know why?”</p><p>She wasn’t stupid, not in the slightest bit, and wondering if she could blame the following confessional already bubbling up her throat on the liquor she’d consumed seven hours ago, “because we’ve never done anything innocent in our lives when the lights are out and we have nowhere to go and no one is listening?”</p><p>“Because tonight you are a poet and I huddle at your feet in awe that you didn’t try to escape when you had the chance.”</p><p>“Like the choice ever occurred to me.” Her fingers, having shifted of their own accord, met his jaw, playing with the underside of stubbly chin, “we have a problem with the dark, you and I.”</p><p>“Not when we’re together in it, we don’t. In fact, it’s one of my favorite places to be with you.”</p><p>She watched him not-so subtly sliding towards her and instinct beat sense to fucking dust as she let him, “why?</p><p>He stopped a good six inches from her, bunches of blankets impeding his travels and she was glad to have the barrier, given her resistance had dialed down to nil, “because you are poetry in the dark.”</p><p>Shifting blankets out of the way, she sidled closer, closer, closer until she felt his arm slide over her back, “but you can’t see me in the dark.”</p><p>His hands itched to feel more, to know more but instead, he relaxed into her, “the feel of you is enough.”</p><p>“Sometimes I don’t think it is.” She let that hang over them, weighted world above, blankets around, heat between, “Mulder?”</p><p>“Yeah?”</p><p>“Don’t make me leave this bed anytime soon, okay?”</p><p>He would have laughed had it not been such a serious question, requiring a well thought out, well-versed response, “if I could manage it, neither of us ever would.”</p><p>Her warm hands found his back, under his shirt, dipped in his spine, “I retract my statement … our problem isn’t the dark … our problem is thoughts in the dark.”</p><p>“Are your thoughts becoming a problem?”</p><p>Shivering despite the overwhelming warmth of her around him around her, “thoughts are always a problem.”</p><p>Hands under her shirt, finding the clasp on her bra and unfastening, “how the hell can you sleep in that thing?”</p><p>“I don’t know. I don’t think about it I guess.”</p><p>With a grin, he kissed her forehead, “exactly.”</p><p>The universe breathed deep with Scully shaking her head and shifting all the way under the covers, head and all, “back in a second.” There was some wicked wiggling and two grunts and one elbow in Mulder’s stomach but before he could smile again, she was back, whipping the bra across the room, “I hate that thing.”</p><p>“So do I.” The look he got did things, “now I can sleep in peace.”</p><p>“Have we moved on from poetry in the dark?”</p><p>Snuggling back into him, “I will not be held responsible for the compromising position we will find ourselves in in the morning as well as the compromising positions we go through to get there. Poetry in the dark writes itself sometimes without our knowing and I’m not going to fight it because in the morning, the curtains will still be closed and this room will still be dark and we will not have a damn thing to do or a damn place to go.”</p><p>“Why didn’t you take your shirt off along with the bra?”</p><p>“Because I’m suddenly very comfortable and a little bit tired.”</p><p>“You are very dangerous in the dark, Scully.”</p><p>“I’ll be more dangerous after I’ve had a nap.”</p><p>Letting his hands drift further down than normal, “do you remember who won the argument last night?”</p><p>“The dark doesn’t care, Mulder and neither do I.”</p>
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